Staunton vindicator. [volume] (Staunton, Va.) 1860-1896, 1887-03-11

5
COINER- COUNTRY LIFE IN AUGUSTA
SEVENTY YEARS AGo-THE CHANGES
INA LIFE TIME-HOW CHILDREN WERE
ToUGHENED IN THE GOOD OLD DAYS.
Reported for the Stau nton INDICATOR
Over the rolling country north of
Waynesboro, as l drove along one of its
roads, Friday morning, hung heavy cold
fog just bordering on snow fall. On the
sharp edge of the fence tops there was a
thin skim of ice, and the slender ends of
the bush tops were tipped with it.
Pointing across a little field my companion
said, There is the graveyard of the old
settlers. Most all of the early corners to
this neighborhood were buried there" It
was an oblong enclosure of. rough stones,
the wall hardly two feet high, and inside
the weeds hid all appearance of graves. 1t
was rough resting place, but it was
grimlY in keeping with the rough, hardy
lives those who laid there had led; and 1t
was as unlike the modern graveyards of
to-day as the handsome brick mansions
which dot the vicinity, and in which the
descendants of the old settlers live, are
unlike the pole cabins in which the fore
fathers spent their rough, tOilsome, honest
lives. I was on my way to interview the
son of one of those settlers and one who had
reached an age sufficient to entitle him to
be called one of the old settlers himself. 1t
was Simon Coiner. 1 was on my way TO
see the oldest man of that name il Virgil
mia and, as far as known, IN this country.
He is the only surviving son Of the pioneer
Caspar Coiner who came from Carlisle,
Pennsylvania. a century ago, and died in
1866 at the good old age of ninety-two
years. He and his sister, Mrs. DR.. Godfrey
Henkel of Newmarket, are the only chill
dren now living out of the twelve that the
pioneer bad. Caspar Coiner was twenty
two years old when he settled On the farm
to which was going, and lived for seventy
years on the same spot of ground that he
first bought, and his son Simon has lived
there for eighty-two years.
THE OLD AND THE NEW.
AS alighted in front of a handsome
modern brick mansion with handsome We
randahs, roy companion pointed out to me
some Of the vestlges of the past that &C.
cupied the outlying ground near it,
There was the old loom house that the
weaving used to be done in; near it was
the house where the hemp used to be bro
ken, and alongside of it was the old still
<bof vt
And inside of the house found something
more modern still, a four months old lit
tie Caspar Coiner, grandson OF Simon
tCoiner, who was born on the centennial of
the arrival of the original Casper Coiner
in Augusta and was named after him in
honor of the event.
If the old and rough times were hard on
tne young it gave them the 1nestimable
boon of lasting health, for the man of
eighty-two who stepped up lightly to greet
me appeared to me as hale and tough as a
man of fifty Els hair is white, bis figure
erect, his voice clear as a bugle, and his
ewes as clear and bright as crystal. lit
Hle deafness is the only failing that an H.
6ervieweg can discover in him. 1t was
well, as I learned afterwards, that / had
come on bad day. for had it been clear
he would have been out in field nearby
blasting rock There is not a clear day
din the year, except sunday. that he does
mot insist upon being at some kind of
work. He very kindly consented to tell
me about the pioneer life of his father and
himself-for in his childhood 1t was pref
ty much the same sort of life his father
first entered on in this country-and seat.
seated before rousing wood fire jotted it
down as he went along. I will let him tell
his own story in his own way.
SETTLING IN THE COUNTY.
SIT was more than hundred yea RS ago
that tay father Caspar Coiner came to this
county. He settled on this very place.
Old James Gillespie lived on it then, and
he was about going to Tennessee when my
father took the place from him. Gillespie
made a sale of his things and the work
harness was made of rope. My father
didn't want to buy any Of the old plumber
and went of and staid away all day to
keep from it, but the old man left an old
cupboard ia the house which my father
found when he came back and SO be had
TO buy it. The house was of logs with an
eight foot chimney and | remember it
well Ny father boarded then with Daniel
Vance, blacksmith, near here. re-
naember the country we'll as boy. 1t was
a brush country there was no timber.
There were no wagons and all hauling was
done On sleds. There was no church any
where near here and the first that was
built in the vicinity was the Koiner church
near Koner's Store. When my father had
put In his first crop of grain he went back
to Carlisle. Before he got there be met
Martin Bush who was moving. He told
him about Virginia. and Bush came here
and went on the placs where Geo. K.
Keiser now lives. There were no mills
in the county in that day, only pair OF
burrs on Christians Creek where they
made little -four. The first load of flour
ever sent from the county SO Richmond
my father took there. After Martin 5ush
made a little money be bought the place
where Cary Smith now lives. He bought it
with two little loads of -four that he sent
to Richmond, and it cost him - Sd, (75
cents) an acre. The timber was 80 scarce
that all the neighbors got together and
went to man named Leekey who lived
near here and lad some ON his place, to
get his permission to cut poles to make
houses of. Our fences were made OF
brush.
THE AUGUSTA COINERs.
My father had twelve children-nine